Tag Archives: Pacific Avenue

Park Avenue Is A Venice Walk Street — Runs Between Speedway And Pacific — And In 2018 The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Just Fed Up — They Were Feeling Really Overrun With Homeless And Bike Racks — And Their Homeless And Bike Problem Was On National TV! — And They Wrote To Bonin Venice Flunky-Boy Taylor Bazley — And Somehow Bonin Transpo Maven Alek Bartrosouf Got Involved! — Probably Cause Of The Bikes! — And Rec And Parks Boardwalk Hitler Bob Davis — And They Got Rid Of The Homeless! — And They Got Rid Of The Bikes! — And All The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Happy For A Hot Second! — And Alek Bartrosouf Was All Like Now Get Planters! — And Here — Says Boutrosouf — Is Eric Garcetti’s Special Planter Catalog To Get Them From!

Well, dang! I already wrote the whole story in the title! Sorry! Except for one important bit, which is that it seems like there’s a little bit of evidence here that CD11 is actively encouraging housedwellers to put in planters to keep their neighbors away. Bonin’s transpo deputy, Alek Bartrosouf, spent months working with some housedwelling residents of Park Avenue getting rid of an encampment and, once it was gone, was all like “put in planters!” It’s not exactly conclusive but it is suggestive.

Here’s the background, part one. The other day I received a bunch of materials about homelessness from the Department of Recreation and Parks. The whole stack is up on Archive.Org. And here are links to some of the prominent items:

Emails between Bob Davis and CD11 folks — These are emails between Boardwalk Hitler Bob Davis of Rec and Parks and various minions at CD11.
Rec and Parks LAMC 63.44 Standard Operating Procedure — LAMC 63.44 is the equivalent of LAMC 56.11 for parks. This invaluable document explains RAP procedures for confiscating and destroying the property of homeless people located inside parks.
Park cleanup request flowchart — A one page decision guide for RAP personnel involved in property confiscation and destruction.
LAMC 63.44 — The text of the law.

And the background part two has to do with those appalling planters, placed illegally on sidewalks by housedwellers to prevent encampments from forming because they hate homeless people so much and have zero respect for the rule of law if it impedes the progress of their inhumanity. This is a huge problem in Venice and elsewhere around the City. And mostly, like I said, the planters are illegal.

And it’s obvious that the City of Los Angeles is aiding, abetting, and conspiring with the bloodthirsty housedwellers that install the damn things, but it has been pretty hard to find actual explicit evidence of the conspiracies,1 so we2 are forced to try to piece together proof of what’s going on. And in this email chain between Bonin’s Transportation Deputy, Alek Bartrosouf, and a bunch of housedwellers, there is just the tiniest bit, as I said, of evidence.

A great deal of the conversation is transcribed below, but the short version is that after months of helping the housedwellers get rid of the homeless encampment and some offensive bike racks, Bartrosouf emailed the ringleaders, one of whom is named Melba Levick (melbalevick@gmail.com), thus:

On Aug 27, 2018, at 18:24, Alek Bartrosouf <alek.bartrosouf@lacity.org> wrote:

Hi Melba,

I was happy to help, although it took a lot of people who contributed to making it happen seamlessly. I have spoken with Gail and Ira about how we can make that area even more beautiful with some landscaping ideas. It would be awesome to have some tree wells and planter boxes to ‘green’ the block but also create a welcoming environment for you, your neighbors, and guests of Venice. Hopefully something like that can be entertained in the near future, ideally with support and direction from the neighborhood council. It is outside my realm of work (I focus on transportation specifically) but happy to help however I can.

Have a great week!

Best,

Alek Bartrosouf

And a little later in the conversation Bartrosouf emailed a few other ringleaders with this charming little missive:

Lauren & Mark

I’ll just leave this here :)

http://peoplest-prod.azurewebsites.net/plaza/

The Kit of Parts is helpful and can be inspiring.

Best,

Alek

The Kit of Parts he mentions is this PDF, consisting of recommended outdoor furniture items for plazas in Los Angeles, including really heavy planters. It includes detailed information on how and where to buy them. Now, there’s a difference between this situation and most of the planters in Venice in that it’s not clear that Bartrosouf is recommending illegal placement. He seems to be recommending that the open space at the west end of Park Avenue between Speedway and the Boardwalk be somehow turned into a plaza and piled up legally with a bunch of junk to prevent re-encampment. But it’s what we have. Turn the page for a transcription of the months-long discussions between the City and the housedwellers that led to the planter-placement recommendation.
Continue reading Park Avenue Is A Venice Walk Street — Runs Between Speedway And Pacific — And In 2018 The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Just Fed Up — They Were Feeling Really Overrun With Homeless And Bike Racks — And Their Homeless And Bike Problem Was On National TV! — And They Wrote To Bonin Venice Flunky-Boy Taylor Bazley — And Somehow Bonin Transpo Maven Alek Bartrosouf Got Involved! — Probably Cause Of The Bikes! — And Rec And Parks Boardwalk Hitler Bob Davis — And They Got Rid Of The Homeless! — And They Got Rid Of The Bikes! — And All The Park Avenue Housedwellers Were Happy For A Hot Second! — And Alek Bartrosouf Was All Like Now Get Planters! — And Here — Says Boutrosouf — Is Eric Garcetti’s Special Planter Catalog To Get Them From!

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A Dark Day in Los Angeles: Venice Beach BID Ordinance Approved by Council on Friday. Final Hearing August 23 at 10 a.m. in Council.

The sun sets on a free Venice Beach for the last time as a new era of totalitarian private/public partnership threatens to ruin everything.
The sun sets on a free Venice Beach for the last time as a new era of totalitarian private/public partnership threatens to ruin everything.
On Friday, July 1, the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles signed an ordinance of intention to establish a Venice Beach BID. It seems that this isn’t final, and there will be a hearing on August 23, 2016 at 10 a.m. “to determine whether to establish the District.” Please mark it on your calendars and come put the integrity of our City Council to the test. After all, if 169 signatures below one of the most eloquent anti-BID statements I’ve ever had the good fortune to read didn’t sway them, I don’t imagine that a huge public outcry will do much. But that’s no reason for remaining silent.

You can read a description of the boundaries of the proposed BID in the ordinance, although it’s a little hard to follow even for someone who grew up out there. The District seems to be bounded roughly by the Boardwalk on the West, by North Venice Boulevard to the South, by Pacific Avenue to the East, and by Rose on the North. Now, I don’t know how much you know about the history of race relations in Venice, but it’s essential to an understanding of the deep politics of this BID1 to know that the area roughly bounded by Electric Avenue, North Venice Blvd., Lincoln Blvd, and (maybe) Brooks Avenue, known as Oakwood, was originally the only area of Venice that non-white people were allowed to own property in. Thus ownership of commercial property in the area encompassed by the proposed BID, like most such areas in Los Angeles, was restricted to white people only until sometime in the late 1960s, and then only as a matter of law. There is no question that the huge majority of that property is, even now, due to the way that commercial property is passed down in families, owned by white people.
Continue reading A Dark Day in Los Angeles: Venice Beach BID Ordinance Approved by Council on Friday. Final Hearing August 23 at 10 a.m. in Council.

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Mark Ryavec’s Venice-Based Gang of Aggressively Moronic Subliterate Meatheads Threatens City of LA with Lawsuit over Conversion of Westminster Senior Center to Homeless Storage Facility

Westminster Senior Center, located at 1234 Pacific Avenue in the heart of the late lamented Venice, now raped, killed, and eaten by the likes of Mark Ryavec and all those smarmy little techbros of both sexes.
Westminster Senior Center, located at 1234 Pacific Avenue in the heart of the late lamented Venice, now raped, killed, and eaten by the likes of Mark Ryavec and all those smarmy little techbros of both sexes.
This is a little off our beat, but we’ll tie it in before the end. As you may or may not be aware, Councilfolk Bonin and Harris-Dawson have been running amok-inna-good-way out west of here, just planning to build all manner of golden goodies for the homeless population of what, forty years ago, was the best part of Los Angeles, which is to say, Venice. There’s the affordable housing project in the City parking lot, there’s the storage facility in Westminster Park, and we don’t know what-all else. Well, just tonight, in the Council file of the latter item, this little slab of Ryaveckian lunacy just hit the internets. Read it and weep for civilization, fellow Angelenos. This Ryavec fellow would be a funny guy if he weren’t a slavering psychopath.1 Continue reading Mark Ryavec’s Venice-Based Gang of Aggressively Moronic Subliterate Meatheads Threatens City of LA with Lawsuit over Conversion of Westminster Senior Center to Homeless Storage Facility

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